Watch: North West Relief Road's latest stage gets go-ahead as protestors make their feelings clear

Members of Shropshire Council's Northern Planning Committee voted by six votes to five today to give a set of some 63 planning conditions for the Shrewsbury North West Relief Road the go-ahead.

Protestors from various groups opposing the North West Relief Road made their feelings clear outside Shirehall before the meeting, including one dressed as a Grim Reaper.

Supporters of the scheme shouldn't expect shovels in the ground any time soon though, as objectors are considering legal challenges. Then if it passes any judicial review challenge there will be a number of technical challenges to overcome.

The principle of building the road was approved in October last year when the committee gave its planning permission. But they asked for the conditions, which are normally resolved behind the scenes, to come back to the committee for approval.

Objectors included Morris Leisure Limited which submitted an objection via its solicitors Irwin Mitchell accusing the committee papers of being "factually inaccurate" and "likely to substantially mislead the committee."

The company warned the committee that if there was a drinking water pollution incident from the new road it would have a "huge impact" on the council.

A council officer told the committee that despite the objection they can "move forward" with the plan as all matters have been covered.

Mike Streetly, of Better Shrewsbury Transport, believes the council may have opened itself up to a legal challenge. After the decision he said: "This is what we expected, but we believe that the council has dug itself into a deep hole and will be an easy target for a legal challenge.

"We will be consulting our legal team."

During the meeting objecting councillors called for the matter to be deferred because the council was proposing a number of pre-conditions, which should have been resolved years ago.

Councillor Julian Dean, who proposed putting off a decision, said: "We will be putting the council at risk by pushing to get on with it. We should be saying 'do the work and then come back to us'."

Councillor David Vasmer supported deferring the matters because of the addition of several responses which came through at the last minute.

There was a 40-minute break in proceedings as the late submissions from Severn Trent Water and others came through, and councillors were given a matter of minutes to digest those submissions after an officer had printed them off.

Councillor Nigel Hartin also backed deferring, comparing it to the Government's Rwanda scheme for "illegal" migrants, when they were arguing the country is safe because they say it is.